Power At Work Blogcast #99: How Workers Win – UFCW Contract Victory at JBS

In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Mark Lauritsen, Veronica Cruz-Velandia, and Leehanyi Baptista to discuss the important and impressive collective bargaining victory by the meatpacking workers at JBS Foods and their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Listen now to learn about a historic collective bargaining win by the UFCW’s members in negotiations with JBS Foods and some of the specifics of what is included in that contract. Discussed are the members’ experience of sitting across the table from a large multi-national corporation and demanding what the workers needed to live good-quality lives, as well as the strategies they used to win a great contract.

Mark Lauritsen is a UFCW International Vice President and Director of the UFCW’s Food Processing, Packing, and Manufacturing Division. Mark is a third-generation packinghouse worker who began his union career as a shop steward in the Wilson Foods meatpacking plant in Cherokee, Iowa. He is also the President of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF).

Veronica Cruz-Velandia is a UFCW shop steward and bargaining committee member who works in the fabrication department for JBS Regional Beef in Souderton, PA. She has worked for JBS for 6 years.

Leehanyi Baptista is a UFCW shop steward and a member of the UFCW’s bargaining committee. He works in the maintenance department at JBS Regional Beef in Souderton, Pennsylvania.